Rick Warren has announced that The Jonas Brothers rock group will be performing at Saddleback Church’s Easter celebration at Angel Stadium on April 4. It is also the megachurch’s 30th anniversary. The Jonas Brothers is a boy band with a following of thousands of carnally-infatuated young girl fans. The band members are professing Christians, but their music is worldly. Their song “Burnin’ Up” says, “Baby, who turned the temperature hotter? Cause I’m burnin up, burnin up for your baby. … I fell so fast/ Can’t hold myself back/ High heels, red dress/ All by yourself, gotta catch my breath.” There is nothing biblical or wholesome about that type of thing. The Bible forbids God’s people to be conformed to the world (Romans 12:2) and warns that “the friendship of the world is enmity with God” and “whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). Those powerful words are ignored in the average church today.
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(The following warning is edited from a sermon by Pastor Terry Coomer, founder and director of For Love of the Family ministries (P.O. Box 535, Elwood, IN 46036, 765-552-1973, tlcoomer@juno.com, http://www.churchpages.org/fortheloveofthefamily).
“Quite frankly, I am just amazed when I talk to Christian leaders and pastors. I recently conversed with a man who talked about a Christian college where he is the leader. He told me about wanting to turn things around. He talked about right music, right dress, and right stand on the Bible, which are very admirable things. Yet the leaders and teachers in this school do all the things that he privately admitted to be wrong.
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New Evangelicals have long divided doctrine into “cardinal” and “secondary” categories, and the “secondary,” we are told, can be overlooked for the sake of unity.
In Grace Awaking, Chuck Swindoll says, “My encouragement for you today is that each one of us pursue what unites us with others rather than the few things that separate us. … There was a time in my life when I had answers to questions no one was asking. I had a position that life was so rigid I would fight for every jot and tittle. I mean, I couldn’t list enough things that I’d die for. The older I get, the shorter that list gets, frankly” (Grace Awakening, p. 189).
Even the most conservative evangelicals, such as Iain Murray, fall into this trap. Condemning Fundamentalism in America Murray stated, “In its tendency to add stipulations not foundational to Christian believing, fundamentalism was prone to make the boundaries of Christ’s kingdom too small” (Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, p. 298).
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“In 2 Chronicles 18, godless Ahab trapped godly Jehoshaphat with the ‘good cause’ syndrome. The Syrians held the border town of Ramoth-gilead. For the safety of both Israel and Judah, that town needed to be secured. On the basis of that good cause Jehoshaphat joined with Ahab. Jehoshaphat’s faith was compromised as he listened to Ahab’s false prophets. With a believer’s discernment he saw that they were not men of God. A true prophet, Micaiah, was summoned to the scene and spoke the truth; but, by that time, Jehoshaphat was so enmeshed with his compromise that he stood with Ahab instead of Micaiah. Compromise ties your tongue so that you cannot rebuke evil.
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